It's been a rough week for Julian Assange, simultaneously one of the most hated and revered people in the world.

Assange, leader of the WikiLeaks project that's released thousands of classified files detailing U.S. military and diplomatic activity, was arrested earlier this week in London on a Swedish accusation of sexual assault. Assange, who denies the charges, was denied bail by the local magistrate.

The U.S. government has indicated that Assange could be in legal jeopardy for disclosing classified information because he is "not a journalist." The federal government may seek his extradition to the United States, which has reportedly already been the topic of discussions between U.S. and Swedish officials.

The arrest is a further serious setback for WikiLeaks, whose actions have incurred the wrath of politicians and pundits but also attracted allies drawn to its cause and disturbed by the response to WikiLeaks.

That lead a hacker group calling itself "Anonymous" to retaliate against the companies for the suspensions, launching distributed denial-of-service attack on their sites. Visa.com and MasterCard.com were both taken offline briefly, and Web site for the Swedish prosecution agency, which is trying to extradite Assange on the sexual assault allegations, has been targeted too. Amazon.com was attacked too, its massive server infrastructure fended off the attack.